5 New Year’s Resolutions for Digital Marketing

It’s that time of year again – the beginning. A fresh start, a clean slate full of promise. While everyone else is binning their cigarettes, filling their fridges with greens and signing up to a gym they’ll seldom visit, we marketers are looking at other ways to better ourselves.

Here are our top picks for what we think every digital marketer should be working towards this year.

1 – Switch Up Your Social

Late last year, we watched with grimace-stricken faces as Facebook all but killed off organic reach for page posts. This is quite a body blow for pages that rely on Facebook for traffic. With all their eggs in one basket, there was always going to be a big old mess when the basket broke.

Facebook is thriving, so it can afford to take potentially user-base alienating risks like this. That’s little comfort for pages missing the reach they used to get. If you’ve been affected, you do have options.

One option is to spend a little cash on ads and boosted posts. They’re generally really cheap, ultra-targeted and effective if you know what you want from them.

Another option is to get a few new baskets to put your eggs in.

2 – Diversify Your Digital Marketing

Even if all you run is a blog, you can’t just rely on writing alone. You need to market your work. So of course, Facebook is the first place you turn to to spread the word. But remember – we’re not trying to keep all our eggs in one basket anymore. So start growing a base of followers on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat – if your target audience is there, you need to be there too.

Branch out into platforms like Medium, where your musings can turn into thought leadership.

It’s not all about social though. Even to part-time bloggers, SEO is as big an asset as it is to giant ecommerce stores. Used correctly and wisely, small bloggers and businesses can outfox their biggest rivals in search engines.

Developed a fanbase already? It’s time to capture emails and start some email marketing campaigns. They really do work.

Sometimes, you’ve got to spend money to make money – and that’s where PPC comes in. Even with a small budget, you can make an impact on any website by knowing how the PPC game works and making your landing pages super-relevant.

3 – Tie Campaigns Together

Print, TV, social, SEO and PPC – every marketing channel you can think of can be fed into a high-impact campaign that covers so many channels, people will think you’ve taken over the world.

Got an ad in print? Use display ads and your social channels to cement the message. Got an ad on TV? Take it even further with a YouTube Channel.

Don’t just regurgitate elements of the ad you already have – use it as an opportunity to continue the story and develop the campaign further.

Keep it tight and tied together – recognisable as your campaign, but in a format fitting of the medium. With a smart strategy and the right management of your advertising spend, you can achieve a far bigger impact.

4 – Prepare for Voice Search

Okay, we’re massive geeks. Some of us (Al) spent a significant amount of our festive break watching the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures – on purpose. Yes, he knows it’s for children.

Anyway – part of the lectures looked at how computers are learning how we speak. And it’s almost frightening how good they’ve become at recognising languages, words and even the emotion of delivery.

Voice commands are the new touchscreen. And just like touchscreens, initial adoption has been slow – but before long, we’ll be living in a world where not only phones and home assistants respond to voice, but any device capable of an internet connection.

5 – Hail to the King

The next person to say “content is king” out loud will be sent back to 1996. As sickening a phrase as it is, it’s 100% true. Just as content owners dominated broadcasting and film, content curators now dominate the web.

What’s Netflix without videos? What’s a library without books? What’s Google without other websites?

It’s no longer enough to just “make content”. A sporadic, 200 word blog entry once in a blue moon does not a content marketing strategy make. No, not even if you tweet it.

You need to make content with purpose. It needs to mean something to someone, or say something important, or be too ridiculous to ignore. You need to research with diligence, then create something that you know people will react to. It probably won’t work the first time. Or the second time. Maybe not even the third or fourth time.

But eventually, you’ll have a hit – “engineered virality”. You can do it, if you’re brave enough to try something bold. If you’re going to make one single resolution to stick to, make it this: make better content.

Kickstart Your Digital Marketing with Rooster

We’re proper digital marketing experts. We don’t just know what to do – we know how to do it. That’s because everything we offer is done in-house. Nothing gets outsourced, ever. From creative concept to delivery of assets, from marketing strategy to results – everything you get from Rooster is Rooster-made.

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